Middlesex Marquee (again)

[jd-science.livejournal.com]

I just sent the following to the Middlesex Bank. I also e-mailed Rebekah about it. Does anyone else ever notice this trend on the marquee but me? It's annoying and depressing.


Hello-

I sent a comment on June 27, 2006 about the scrolling marquee outside your bank. I have not yet heard a response.

This is what I sent you then:

"I live in the Davis Square area and wanted to express my unhappiness with the new scrolling marquee above your bank. This weekend I was sitting in the square with some friends, and within five minutes we saw the words "death" and "kill" repeated several times. This does not seem appropriate at all for large, bright broadcasting in the middle of Davis Square.

I realize that the marquee was just scrolling news headlines, but I don't believe that news headlines - particularly those types of headlines - are really that important to building a truly informed public and in fact contribute to a destructive social atmosphere. If the marquee must be there (which I don't think it great, but I understand you've probably put a lot of money into it), I'd prefer it just to scroll the time, temperature, and maybe sports scores. And please nothing about death, killing, children being bombed, and so forth. We can get enough of that everywhere else."

Today, August 3, I was eating lunch in the square at around 1 pm, and one right after the other, I saw the following headlines scroll across, multiple times:

Iranian Woman Awaits Death By Stoning
New Surgical Procedure for Incontinence
Woman Afraid of Height Dies in Plane Crash
Israeli Bombing Kills 7
Welcome to Davis Square

There was another headline after the stoning that had something to do with death, but I don't exactly remember what it said.

This hardly seems appropriate to be displayed in large orange letters in the middle of Davis Square. Death, destruction, ridiculousness, and hey! Welcome to Davis!

I went into the bank to ask who to talk to about my issues with the sign, and the tellers told me Mr. Smoliss (?) was in charge. I asked if I could talk to him, and they said, “Well, his office is upstairs.” I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to just walk up and there and knock on the door, so I am writing via the official channel on your website.

At the recent Davis Square Task Force meeting, it was noted that the sign is only allowed, by law, to display the time, temperature, and public service announcements. The president also said he wanted the sign to promote community events and activities.

(for notes, see http://community.livejournal.com/davis_square/565301.html)

It hardly seems that what I saw today is in line with any of this. In addition, after all these useless, dramatic headlines were several about mergers and business acquisitions, also not of local community interest.

I would appreciate a response from you about this problem.

Comments

[csbermack.livejournal.com]

I agree! After all, nothing is as important to an informed citizenry as sports scores.

Really, displaying horrible words like DEATH and KILL and BOMBING and WAR is unconscionable. How can they live with themselves, talking about such horrible, awful things? I know I never want to see those words! They damage my calm.

Besides, children sometimes walk through Davis. And children can read! I don't want to be the one explaining to some weeping innocent little angel why there are dozens of dead children in Qana. No! How am I even going to explain what Qana is? Much less what a massacre is?

It's better if our public spaces are left as peaceful, loving environments where the horrors of the world are walled out. It's much better for us to focus on the Red Sox. The only blood we should ever be thinking about in Davis Square is the blood on Schilling's ankle.

[ron_newman]

There are plenty of places I can get that kind of news if I want it. However, there are only a few places to get news about the local area -- the Somerville Journal, the Somerville News, this LJ community, and various bulletin boards in local businesses. If the bank wants to make a positive contribution to Davis Square, they should concentrate on local news and events.

[brianbeck.livejournal.com]

The point is not censorship. The point is simply that it is an ugly intrusion in the Square.

Go here to register a complaint:
http://www.middlesexfederal.com/contact.asp

[csbermack.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the link!

[ariwriter.livejournal.com]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but complaints to the bank (via a website, at that, where who knows who's on the receiving end and won't just hit delete) are moot. Sure, the bank could take it down but they already put it up so they see a reason. The city can't force the bank to do anything, but I forget my zoning laws: do the aldermen have any recourse if enough citizens are upset?

[ron_newman]

The bank is a local business and wants to be a good corporate citizen. If they get enough negative feedback, whether via the website or by people walking in to complain, they may decide that the sign is not a net benefit to the bank.

Since the sign was permitted by zoning at the time it was erected, any later change in the zoning law would not affect it; it would be 'grandfathered'.

[artic-monkeys.livejournal.com]

what about a home rule petition?

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

I am completely befuddled by your question. As I understand it, home rule petitions allow towns to do things that would otherwise run afoul of state law, by special permission of the legislature. But zoning regulations are already decided at the town level (note that the zoning ordinance elsewhere in this thread is city of Somerville, not Massachusetts). A home rule petition wouldn't give the town any powers it doesn't already have.

[artic-monkeys.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I am not up on all of that fancy legal stuff, It sounded like Ron was saying that there is no way to legally get them to turn the sign off. I just threw this out there because Ron normally would have clarified as well.

I am sure that the Bank will agree with the majority or community; but, out of curiosity, is there is no way legally to get them to turn the sign off?

[ron_newman]

I honestly don't know. Normally you cannot change the zoning law to prohibit an existing use that was previously permitted.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

At this point you're well beyond my ken. But the point was made elsewhere (possibly by Ron) that if the bank realizes it's bad business to keep it on because it makes customers hate them, they'll turn it off. Why start flinging around government hammers if you don't have to?

[ron_newman]

One reason is to prevent any more such signs from being erected. Imagine if all seven of Davis Square's banks decided to put one up.

[numbersnletters.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's the Middlesex Bank's place to Clockwork Orange us into awareness of DEATH and KILL and BOMBING and WAR, in an unending march of neon orange, 24 hours a day. It's not as though the marquee then provides information about how to contact local community groups that might be working to end these problems. It's just a sensationalistic, shrieking orange invasion that makes you stare at the bank (and feel disheartened.)

I don't think that Davis Square is the whitewashed Stepford yuppie mecca that you sarcastically make it out to be. And it's not as though the marquee is some kind of punk-rock wake-up call. It's an unwelcome onslaught of media garbage designed to engender a constant, low-grade sense of fear, dread, and powerlessness.

Frankly, most of the people with whom I associate in Davis Square are already highly aware of the world's problems, and are each working, in their own way, to help fix them. I think that keeping our town square free from a faceless town crier of doom is a step towards community-building, and a step away from social desolation.

How can we find the strength to help to end the world's ills, if every time we step outside, we are assaulted with words and images that are designed to cow us into a state of constant fear, depression, and apathy? I say, stand up against mind control, don't usher it in as the voice of reason.

Said another way

[komos.livejournal.com]

How can we find the strength to spread the Lord's Word, if every time we step outside, we are assaulted with words and images that are designed to cow us into a state of constant lust, depravity, and Godlessness? I say, stand up against mind control, don't usher it in as the voice of reason.

Not the same.

[numbersnletters.livejournal.com]

I don't see the parallel. A proselytizing Christian has a desire to wedge their views into my brain. My desire is to be free of that sign's action of wedging information into my brain.

Re: Not the same.

[komos.livejournal.com]

That's one way to look at it.

Another is to acknowledge that you are making a demand to restrict the flow of information because of your perception of its purpose and because it offends your sensibilities. This is the same approach used by radical fundamentalists to restrict, for instance, the teaching of sex-ed and evolution in schools.

Re: Not the same

[numbersnletters.livejournal.com]

In my opinion, the scrolling sign on top of the Middlesex Bank does not represent "the flow of information". The sign constitutes an invasion into my mental space. I do not agree with your comparison of me to a radical fundamentalist; I don't want to snuff out or make inaccessible the information they display there. The sign is in a public space, and when I am in that public space, my mind ought not to be an open book to whatever the proprietors of the Middlesex Bank want to write in it, via their neon sign.

A neon orange sign is incapable of listening to anyone else's point of view. Much like a radical fundamentalist, the neon orange sign blares on and on and on without stopping, incapable of listening to anyone else, obnoxiously regurgitating only what its programmer has told it to say.

Re: Not the same

[komos.livejournal.com]

You should definitely get together with Rebecca Hagelin for coffee sometime.

Re: Not the same

[numbersnletters.livejournal.com]

whatever

Re: Not the same

[komos.livejournal.com]

How is your position fundamentally different? Hagelin has written extensively about the negative and harmful flow of information and its effect of poisoning our society, and has actively worked to find ways to restrict it in order to protect her children from its deleterious effects. You're advocating restricting a stream of poisonous headlines in order to protect yourself from they're deleterious effects. You are engaging in precisely the same "culture gone mad" justification of censorship, albeit with a different political slant.

Re: Not the same.

[four-thorns.livejournal.com]

"the flow of information"? are you serious? it's a message board, not the new york times. i hardly consider a provider of four-word phrases with no follow-up whatsoever to be a source of information, and if you do, then frankly that's just a sign of how america and the american media has been reduced to a culture of soundbites and flashy graphics at the expense of substance. i don't need a message board to know that people are dying in the middle east, and since it can't go in-depth to tell me anything more about the situation, it's useless as a source of information.

Re: Not the same.

[komos.livejournal.com]

It's one thing to note that the marquee is an eyesore.

It's another thing entirely to claim that a marquee projecting news headlines is a "faceless town crier of doom" and an attempt at "mind control." I'm not making claims as to its effectiveness. I am simply noting that taking issue with scrolling news headlines as some kind of mind poison that affects one's ability to function doesn't stray that far from the "culture gone mad" argument the right uses.

The news as soundbite discussion is something else entirely. Of course, you'll note that there hasn't been a general outcry here about the nigh on useless Metro.

I guess people are to engrossed with the free Sudoku.